Attention Hollywood: Brett Ratner doesn’t want your stinking comic book movies anymore. According to MTV, he claims “there’s nothing left” to adapt into what he perceives as a mainstream, big budget tentpole flick. We here at The Playlist would like to piece through his quotes. Thanks to MTV for the heads’ up- calling him “love him or hate him” really takes some chutzpah, since we’re pretty sure anyone who knows the name ‘Brett Ratner’ loves ovarian cancer more than him.
From the interview: “I would do any superhero movie that I was asked to do,” Ratner told MTV News. “But I wouldn’t have been interested in ‘Iron Man.’ I have a lot of respect for [Jon Favreau], because to me, it was a B-character. ‘Iron Man’? … But look what he did.”
Translation: Don’t get me wrong- I am a whore. Drive some money up to my doorstep, and I’ll even sign on to “Beverly Hills Cop IV.” And trust me, that shit is radioactive. Still, I love superhero movies, and would love to do one, because they make a lot of money and are easy to [hire other people to] storyboard. But I never read them, because I was too busy in my youth chasing tail, and comic books are for virgins, not people who aggressively pretend to be sexual mack truck daddies. You like that? A character says it in my ‘Guitar Hero’ pitch that no one wants to make. Anyway, when they greenlit “Iron Man,” I thought they were making a movie out of the song, and I thought it was cool until I realized I never listened to the lyrics of any song I’ve ever heard. Then the movie made a fuckload of cash, and I realized they’ve been making Iron Man comics for forty years. Good for Favreau- this should have been a lesson to me, that literacy may someday pay. Then again, Favs only has one movie under his belt- I’m a franchise man, dawg.
From the interview: “I was so upset when I left ‘Superman,’” said Ratner. “[Bryan] Singer has his ‘X-Men,’ [Christopher] Nolan has ‘Batman’— there’s nothing left. ‘Hulk’ has been exploited already. There’s nothing left for me. I mean, I’m not going to go and do the Silver Surfer or something.”Translation: After I left the WB lot for Superman [once they fired me], I realized I had to catch on to one of these properties quick. I made X-Men 3 and laughed my way to the bank, but then no one hired me because they made me kill all the characters, so I had to promise Chris Tucker I would give to some black kids charity or some shit to do a third ‘Rush Hour,’ and then no one liked that either! At that point, the superheroes that show up on vintage little boy underwear I require my girlfriends to wear to bed with me had been taken. Even characters I’ve never heard of became blockbusters- what the hell is “Wanted”? I was so far down the fucking totem that Marvel wouldn’t even let me have their sloppy seconds “Hulk” movie- hello, I worked with Ed Norton! Some superhero movies have even killed other potentially awesome superheroes I would do- I wanted so badly to do “Silver Surfer” until I realized he was in a kiddie “Fantastic Four” movie that nobody saw and I heard Adam Shankman talking shit about the other day.
Brett Ratner currently has a movie adaptation of “Youngblood,” a comic book no one has ever liked, in development.